Presentation Summary

During 14 years at a biopesticide company working in the R & D and international marketing of microbial insecticides, I was able to observe firsthand the challenges that face a biopesticide company in achieving broad acceptance of its products in agricultural markets. When Mycogen was first begun in 1983, the obvious challenge for us was to develop products and technologies that would allow the company to build a profitable business. As it turned out Mycogen was able to do a good job of identifying new products and developing some unique technologies. However, when it came to commercializing e products we had developed, the market penetrations we were able to achieve fell far below expectations. Why?

In my experience there are three primary reasons why biopesticides have not been more successful as an industry. 1) inappropriate and poorly resourced marketing. The first, was our choice to market these products as simply new active ingredients that could compete alongside chemical pesticides. 2) A failure to recognize that these products as the seeds of an entirely different paradigm for crop protection and management. Development and marketing these products on their strengths, not simply as new active ingredients being sold alongside traditional chemicals, would direct enough attention on the new conceptual framework for marketing biopesticides. 3) Poor shelf life stability has often been cited as a major impediment to the market penetration of biopesticides, and clearly it has made these products less acceptable to distributors, who are accustomed. to much more stable synthetic chemicals.

This reflects a broader failure to fully understand that these products are part of a paradigm shift in crop protection and management. And while true, this penetration of the chemical market and the obvious challenge was to develop products and technologies that would allow us to build a profitable business. I believe that we have three primary areas that have been problematic for the biologically-based products. These are 1) the conceptual framework for using these products 2) the need for more technology developed specifically for biologicals, and 3) distribution channels to the end user.

After 14 years with in the biopesticide industry, 8 of those in international development and marketing, I had the opportunity to observe a number of markets and to form some strong opinions as to what might be the primary factors limiting the adoption by farmers of biopesticides and other biologically-based products.

I believe that as an industry we have placed too much emphasis on the products themselves and not enough on the concepts and strategies for using them. The use concepts we have developed are virtually identical to those of the synthetic chemical pesticides. Part of the reason for this lies in the fact that many of the individuals who in the early to mid 1980's came to biopesticide companies out of the agrochemical industry, bringing with them the chemical model and perspective. Upper management in the new companies thought of biopesticides as simply safer chemicals and looked to biotechnology as a means for improving product performance and stability. The benefits of pest selectivity were not fully exploited, because they were not particularly important in the chemical model.

Another path they chose, development of transgenic plants, was in many ways a simple extension of the chemical paradigm. Rather than advise growers to spray every week, they simply expressed a toxin in the plant. Unless we are conscious that we are in a paradigm shift as opposed to a product shift, biologicals will always be at a disadvantage. The chemical paradigm that currently dominates says that a farmer has to depend on technology (chemicals) to protect his crop. Chemicals are the foundation of his pest, disease and weed management. All else is secondary.

The paradigm that we need to be developing for the biological products is ecologically based. An ecological paradigmis that there is already available in the crop ecosystem a host of biological factors that can help the farmer protect his crop. Biology/ecology is the foundation and the biological products are then overlaid to complement and enhance ecological factors. Integrated pest management is part of this paradigm.

Regarding production and application technologies, we have largely focused on emulating what already existed in the agrochemical industry. We need to take advantage of the intrinsic and unique characteristics of living organisms, such as their ability to reproduce. For example Eco Soil Systems BioJect bioreactor, circumvents the limitations of packaging and storing living microorganisms, by producing beneficial microorganisms on the farm site and delivering them directly to the crop in a highly active state via the irrigation system. We need to place more emphasis on developing a broad range of novel concepts and technologies for how to produce, package and deliver biologicals.

Distribution has also been a major obstacle to expanding use of biologicals. Even in those cases where companies have developed excellent biologica1 products, it has been difficult to find distributors who will aggressively promote them. Higher cost, lower margins, less attractive sales promotion programs, additional training needed for sales staff and farmers, have all made biologicals less attractive to most traditional agricultural chemical distributors who were firmly rooted in and familiar with chemicals.

Thus, we find the biocontrol industry stuck between the new and emerging biological/ecological paradigm that is the future and the existing chemical paradigm that currently dominates the marketplace.

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